Plan to open up law and order discussions

Date: 15/01/1998

By Simon Coss

THE UK presidency is aiming to lift the veil which hangs over one of the most secretive areas of EU decision-making.

But while its plans to open up discussions among the Union's law and order ministries to greater public scrutiny have been welcomed by civil liberties campaigners, insiders warn they could backfire.

As part of its crusade to 'bring Europe closer to the people' during its EU presidency, the British government is working on a series of initiatives aimed at providing the public with more information on the workings of the Union's justice and home affairs 'third pillar' - the decision-making arm dealing with such sensitive areas as drug trafficking, terrorism, organised crime and immigration policy.

London argues that a calendar of all important justice and home affairs meetings should be published, both in paper form and on the Internet, at the beginning of every EU presidency. This would include not just ministerial-level talks, but also meetings of the secretive K4 Committee, which prepares the ground for political discussions, and the various working groups whose views are fed into K4.

The UK says agendas for the meetings should also be published, although it concedes in a note to its EU partners that: "It may at times be necessary to suppress mention of very sensitive items under discussion."

Tony Bunyan, a long-time campaigner for greater EU openness and editor of civil liberties newsletter Statewatch, has cautiously welcomed the UK move, saying that it appeared to be "a step in the right direction".

But he added that the UK must stress the need for people outside the 'Brussels circuit' to have access to information on justice and home affairs activities.

"It is very important that proposals are put on the Internet and given to national parliaments so that we can have a proper, open debate," he said.

However, some critics have warned that the UK's good intentions may actually result in the third pillar becoming less transparent than it is at the moment.

"If agendas have to be published, then there will simply be less in them. Any sensitive subjects will just not be mentioned," said one Council of Ministers expert.

Officials also point out that as no officially released documents will contain information about where the 15 different member states stand on a particular issue, their usefulness will be questionable given that all decisions in this area must be arrived at unanimously through agreement between governments.

It will, in any case, be difficult for London to persuade all of its EU partners to agree to even the limited moves towards openness it is proposing. While a strong culture of transparency exists in the Scandinavian member states, countries such as France and Germany have traditionally been far less willing to allow information about ministerial deliberations to be made freely available.

It does, however, seem likely that some sort of agreement based on the British plans will emerge, probably at an informal ministerial meeting in the UK city of Birmingham later this month.

The UK EU Presidency has proposals to provide the public with more information on the workings of the Third Pillar.